Stepping into the future with ACH

Sam Ackley, Chief Executive Officer of DCS Holdings Group LLC, the owner of ACHeck21, believes ISOs and merchant level salespeople (MLSs) seeking lower cost alternatives to card acceptance for their merchants will find the automated clearing house (ACH) services his company offers to be a simple and affordable solution.

"I think a big challenge in the future for the industry is going to be if the swipe point of sale can remain relevant for setting up merchant accounts," Ackley said, noting that many merchants today question the high fees they're paying. "Over the next 10 years, I think you're going to see places that will only take ACH exclusively and won't allow any payments on Visa or MasterCard."

He said inflection in the market is creating a vacuum for lower-cost alternatives and companies like his are positioned to serve that segment. For ACH customers, he said his company can set up a closed looped solution for a merchant that will allow a customer to walk into the store, check out and have the purchase amount appear on the customer's phone. "Once you hit OK, the money will move from your account to the merchant's account," he said. "That's how simple it is."

Keeping the ACH flow simple

According to ACHeck21, the company offers its ACH and Check 21 payment processing solutions in a single, hosted work flow designed to improve efficiency and reduce the vast complexities of processing ACH, checks and verifying account information using POS systems. Their product is available for Internet, mobile device, laptop, PC desktop and scanner applications. ACHeck21's solution is also compliant with all security protocols.

ACHeck21 stands behind two value propositions for its users that make the solution not only easy to integrate with legacy systems, but inexpensive to use. "ACH is agile and can be brought to bear very quickly to complement existing products users already have for credit card processing," Ackley said. "We bring an agile, flexible ability to address those kinds of needs for the salesperson and the markets that we are in."

Adding to the value proposition is a second sticking point for most clients. "What we also have is the ability to combine all of that into a single workflow," he said. "As subtle as that sounds, it becomes really big when you are looking to reduce long-term operating costs by maintaining fewer human resources. You don't need a lot of people to do the work; it is automated in the cloud."

Self-contained, speedy, customizable

Within its product suite, the ACHeck21 Micro provides a self-contained, thin client software solution for remote deposit capture that integrates easily with over 100 document and check scanner models. ACHeck21 Micro operates at high-speed, processing over 200 documents per minute, and merchants can apply distributed capture for multiple deposit locations.

With ACHeck21's advanced technology, accuracy is core. "Using both magnetic read and OCR technology, we get an almost 100 percent read rate on the magnetic ink character recognition (MICR) line," Ackley said. "We are also able to capture the information right off the front of the check. We can capture the check writer's name, their address, city, state, and the ZIP code; just about anything you want to pull from the face of the check."

He added that the system also verifies captured information against other databases, which helps prevent mistakes during processing.

ACHeck21's software is also designed to be customizable to meet the needs of developers who wish to target specific markets. "If you're a developer and you want to develop a product in a sandbox you can sign up on our website, download our API, set up your own account, start coding and start processing transactions and build your whole product for free," Ackley said. "You don't pay anything until you move money."

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